Abbott's office defends Slipper response

Paul Osborne, AAP Senior Political Writer

Federal Labor is trying to link Opposition Leader Tony Abbott to its claim there was a Liberal National Party (LNP) "conspiracy" to bring down former party member Peter Slipper and, by doing so, the government.

The attack came as Mr Abbott's office denied it began drafting a media release responding to the April 20 filing of court documents by political adviser James Hunter Ashby, accusing the then parliamentary speaker of sexual harassment, the night before the story broke.

Debate also erupted on Thursday over the future of Liberal candidate Mal Brough, who is taking on his former LNP colleague Mr Slipper in the Queensland seat of Fisher.

The metadata of the media release on the Ashby matter sent by Mr Abbott's office to media outlets indicates it was "created" at 11.08pm on Friday, April 20, 2012 - before News Limited published its exclusive story on the Saturday.

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Asked to explain the discrepancy between the time the document was apparently created and transmitted to the media at 9.17am on the Saturday, Mr Abbott's office said that during April the computer server timestamps were sometimes out by up to 10 hours.

AAP saw several other documents on an office computer which showed the same discrepancy.

"Our records clearly show that the press release was drafted, converted into a PDF, and issued on the morning of the April 21, 2012," a spokesman for Mr Abbott told AAP.

The timing of the document's creation is important because of government questions about whether Mr Abbott's office may have had prior knowledge of the upcoming story.

Asked when work began on the media release, Mr Abbott's office declined to comment.

On Wednesday, Federal Court Justice Steven Rares dismissed Mr Ashby's claim, saying it was an abuse of process with the main purpose of pursuing "a political attack against Mr Slipper".

Senior Labor MPs believe Mr Abbott owes the public an explanation about any prior knowledge he had of the case.

"This is a conspiracy of enormous proportions," Labor frontbencher Craig Emerson told ABC radio on Thursday.

"Answer these basic questions: What did he know about this? What does he mean by 'no specific knowledge'?"

On April 23, Mr Abbott was asked by ABC 7.30 presenter Chris Uhlmann if it was possible Mr Ashby had any assistance from anyone in the coalition to prepare his case.

"Look, I had no specific knowledge of this until I read the newspapers on Saturday morning," Mr Abbott said.

"And to the best of my knowledge, no one in the coalition had specific knowledge of this until they read the newspapers."

Mr Abbott is currently travelling to London and was due to land in the UK about 10.30pm on Thursday, Australian time.

Coalition frontbenchers on Thursday were standing by Mr Brough, a former Howard government minister, who was named in the court judgment as having worked in "combination" with Mr Ashby and a fellow staffer to bring about the sexual harassment case in order to damage Mr Slipper.

Shadow attorney-general George Brandis said the court made no findings against Mr Brough.

"There is no possibility whatever that Mr Brough will be disendorsed," he told ABC television.